


Stay With Me

by rainbooks



Category: In The Flesh
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:30:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2120298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbooks/pseuds/rainbooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'll see you tomorrow." </p><p>And he does </p><p>Rick doesn't die so neither does Kieren, but NEITHER does the strange dark haired Irishman that shows up in Roarton out of no where. So when Kieren goes to sleep that night, his dreams are equal parts Rick and composed, handsome men appearing out of bright lights, asking him to light their cigarettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Love triangles are such cliches but they're definitely a fun one. 
> 
> I have sort of an idea of what I think would happen in this situation, but I'd love to hear who you think would be best for Kieren, if Rick never died and if Simon were around (and sober.)
> 
> I might just change my mind if someone convinces me. Thanks for reading and enjoy! :)

It’s approaching midnight and Kieren is in the den alone, several lit candles casting about a flickering glow. In the silence, Kieren has nodded off, his head drooping to the side and covering up RICK in the carving on the wall (RICK + REN 4 EVER.)

When this same Rick, stumbling through the woods with a black plastic bag in hand, crouches down at the mouth of the cave, he could see a pair of legs stretched out, the feet sort of lolled to one side. It’s unmistakably Kieren - skinny jeans over skinner legs tucked into black combat boots - and yet, there is a sort of hesitance in Rick’s expression as he looks at them, as if he’s deciding whether or not to come into the cave at all.

Finally seeming to make a decision, Rick makes his way into the den, wearing a look of obvious apprehension as he goes. But there is nothing scary about the boy waiting inside - we can see that. He might be scowling in his sleep and dressed in black, but there’s something soft about him. He’s small and freckled and has strawberry-blonde hair curling into his face.

Even Rick, who is apparently dreading this meeting with Kieren Walker, is a little taken aback when he finds him asleep at his feet, and the private smile that he gives while looking down at him makes you think that perhaps the decision he made should have been an easier one. Now, you think that maybe, the hesitance from earlier was something more internal. The apprehension was not exactly toward seeing Kieren but toward something else.

Rick kicks Kieren’s boot and he jumps awake, blinking rapidly. “You're not asleep, are you?” Rick calls.

Kieren rubs his eyes and yawning, says, “Well, it is late.” He smiles tightly as Rick sits cross-legged in front of him. Something in Rick’s face tells Kieren that he’s already plastered. He frowns. “Did you leave anything for me?” he says. 

The remark is obviously meant to be biting, but Rick pulls a mostly full bottle of White Lighting out from the bag and holds it up like a prize, unaffected. “Just for you, mate,” he says. Kieren reaches over and takes the bottle from him, immediately removing the cap and taking a swig. “Unless you want to share, that is,” Rick adds, grinning. Kieren hands it back over.

Rick drinks from the bottle and when he tries to pass it, Kieren shakes his head. Rick shrugs and takes another sip, then caps it.

Watching Rick lean up against the other side of the cave, Kieren pulls his legs to his chest. There is a long, quiet moment where all that can be heard are cricket chirps from outside the cave. Rick runs his hands over the pattern on his trousers. Finally, with his voice strained, Kieren says, “I was worried you weren’t gonna show.” 

Rick makes a face, immediately defensive. “I said I’d come, didn’t I?” he says, glancing up at him and then away. “Never mind that I’m a bit late.” 

Kieren says nothing to combat that, disheartened and a little ticked off by the response. He stares at Rick but Rick looks determinedly down at his thigh, picking at nothing. Kieren huffs. “Well, pass me the goddamn cider, then,” he says, and Rick looks up at him, finally, but now, he’s glaring. 

“I’m not gonna give you shit!” says Rick. “I wouldn’t have come at all if I knew you were gonna act like such a dick!”

“I’m acting like a dick?”

“Yeah, Ren, you are.” 

They’re staring each other down, and although blush is creeping up Kieren’s neck and tears are springing up in his eyes, it’s Rick that looks away first. Rick’s drunk, after all, and he knows he can’t beat a stubborn Kieren on a good day.

Kieren’s hands are tightening into fists watching Rick nonchalantly brush away gravel with his clumsy fingerers. “I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you for hours, Rick,” he says. “And I should have left.” Rick tucks his head further away. “Because obviously, you were busy with your other friends. And I don’t really care what you do or who you do it with, just don't ask me to wait for you anymore. I can’t believe that you’d expect me to sit here for you in the dark until you’re done dicking around with those jerks, and I’m not going to do it again. Okay?”

Rick doesn’t answer and Kieren closes his eyes tightly. “I just don’t know why you’re doing this," he says. "You’re my best friend, and you say you don’t believe the shite people say about me - you say you don’t care - and now all of a sudden you don’t want to be seen in public with me?” His voice has raised quite above a shout. “Like I’m a bloody secret!”

“Look,” Rick says finally, managing to glance up at Kieren. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ren, I really am. I shouldn't have done that.” Kieren chuckles darkly, brushing hair out of his face. “I’ve just been, thinking - about you leaving for art school and all, and I’m happy for you, seriously, it’s just that…”

Kieren’s face has softened and Rick drinks deeply from the White Lightning. He hands it over mutely and Kieren takes it, tilting back the bottle and drinking. With Kieren’s eyes closed, Rick watches him safely, staring at his throat as he swallows. Rick’s expression shows something like guilt. Like unease. Like desire. 

“Here,” says Rick, his voice thick. He clears his throat, and lifting up his ass, takes something out of his back pocket and tosses it over. He sniffs. “Smoking’s bad for you, you know.”

Kieren smirks at the pack of cigarettes. “Thanks, mate,” he says softly, sticking one in his mouth. He stretches out one of his legs and gets a match box out of his own pocket, his lashes casting long shadows over his lowered eyelids as he strikes a match and lights his cigarette. Taking a drag, he shakes out the match and tosses it. 

Rick doesn’t look away. He clears his throat again. “You look so badass, Kieren. The whole punk thing really comes together when you’re smoking a cig.”

Kieren coughs out a laugh, smoke falling from his mouth. “Shut up,” he says.

“I’m just saying,” says Rick with a shrug. “I’m supportin’ your weirdo endeavors, cause you’re my best mate and I believe in you.”

“That doesn’t exactly make up for your dick-like behavior, you know.” 

Rick makes an incredulous face. “Really?” he says jokingly. “Cigarettes and compliments didn’t work? That’s bullshit. Just wait a few moments and it’ll hit you. See, Ren, I know you well enough to know that cigs and saying nice shit is the way to your heart. In fact, I’m gonna visit you at your fancy school and tell all the girls following you around that that’s the way to catch you.”

Kieren rolls his head back against the cave wall, smiling. He blows smoke into the air and lazily glances over across at Rick. “You do that, mate,” he says. 

Rick smiles. “We’ve got one last summer, don’t we Ren? We can make it really great.”

“We’ve got next summer too,” says Kieren. “And the next, and the next. I’ve got to go somewhere over the holidays.”

“It wont be fuckin’ Roarton, though.” Rick shakes his head. “Nah, you’ll be in Paris or something, painting French girls.” Kieren laughs as Rick rearranges himself, draping his body parallel to the cave walls and posing. “Paint me like one of your French girls, Kieren Walker,” he says, raising his eyebrows suggestively. 

“I will, straight away,” says Kieren. “with massive Winslet tits.” 

Rick pushes Kieren’s leg. “ _You’re_ a fucking tit.”

“Good one, mate.”

Laughing, Rick points at the cider by Kieren. “Let’s get that gone, already,” 

Kieren nods. “Agreed.”

These boys, having been friends for years and years could easily entertain each other in cave out in the middle of the woods, especially while sloshed. Out here, they could laugh and shout as loud as they wanted; here no one was watching, and no one saw. Saw, that is, what you have, of course, seen right away, what Kieren might have found years ago, and what Rick keeps pretending isn’t there. 

But even though no one else has seen Rick and Ren’s den, where, if drunk enough, Rick might wrestle Kieren to the ground or Kieren might stroke Rick's cheek, other Roarton villagers had still seen _it_. 

They may not have seen the way that, if bladdered enough, Rick might let Kieren hug him and not let him go, even though his face is tucked between his chin and shoulder and he’s breathing on his neck, but they have seen _it_. 

No one has seen the way that, if pretending to be drunk enough, Rick would fix Kieren’s mussed up hair, stroking still, when it looked fine again, and Kieren, who would be watching Rick very closely, would see him mouth the words: _so soft_. 

But they didn’t need to. 

Still, though, when the boys leave the woods, they walk with a bit more of a distance between them, so they don’t bump shoulders anymore. When walking through the village, the space between them is charged up, and quiet now, Rick and Ren focus on keeping their breaths from being so loud, their chests raising and falling and this terrible feeling pooling in their stomachs as they get closer to the road where they’d part. 

Kieren recognizes the feeling as want. 

When they get to that road, they face each other for a long while, staring in the dimness. Neither of them wants to go home, but at eighteen years old, they both still live with their parents, and at this point it’s very late out. Finally, Rick reaches out and cups Kieren’s shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. 

Kieren nods. “I’ll see you.”

A few blocks away from his house, Kieren lights another cigarette and hasn’t finished it by the time he gets home, so he stands in the road, staring at the light on at Ken Burton’s. His wife had just recently passed away and Ken never really got any sleep anymore. 

Another light floods the street, and Kieren squints down at a car coming slowly down the road. He couldn’t think who it could possibly be at this time of night, and in his drunken paranoia, his heart begins to speed up, thinking it was someone come for him. 

The car stops right before it gets to his house, though, in front of old Ms. Monroe’s place, just across the street and to the left of him. The engine and the headlights are still on, and only the passenger door opens, a figure coming out and then saying something lowly to the driver. 

The figure shuts the door and the car drives away, the back lights shedding light on them for just a moment - long enough for Kieren to recognize that it was a dark haired man he’d never seen before, wearing a large jumper and a backpack up on one shoulder. 

Kieren is breathing hard, unbelievably frightened, and although he tells himself to go inside, he doesn’t. He stands there, watching the man standing in Ms. Monroe’s yard. Kieren can’t tell in the darkness, but he thinks the man is staring back. 

After a moment, the man clears his throat. “Would you mind if I bum a smoke off you?” he says, quietly, but clearly enough for Kieren to hear. His voice is deep and thickly Irish. 

Shaking his head, Kieren drops his own cigarette in the road and stamps on it. He fumbles for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket and him and the man meet halfway in the road so he could hand him one. 

“Thanks,” the man says, sticking it in his mouth. “And I hate to ask-”

Kieren strikes a match. The man smirks around the cigarette. With the lit match between them, Kieren sees the man more clearly. He’s handsome, this man, older and just barely taller than Kieren with a quiet composure about him. He leans forward and looks up at Kieren with his eyebrows raised, waiting. 

Kieren holds the match before the man, lighting the cigarette, without a word. 

“Thank you,” murmurs the man, in the darkness again. 

“I better get inside,” Kieren says. 

The man nods, backing up toward the curb. “Nice to meet you.”

Kieren doesn’t turn back. He goes quietly inside his house and up the stairs into his room. He’s exhausted, but for some reason, he goes to his window and nudges open the curtain. He can barely tell, but the man is still there, in Ms. Monroe’s yard, smoking Kieren’s cigarette. 

Kieren lets the curtain fall. He takes off his boots and jeans and gets in his bed in his boxers. He's shocked to find that his dreams are equal parts Rick and composed, handsome men appearing out of bright lights, asking him to light their cigarettes.


End file.
